


Cross Country

by Quasar



Series: Criss-Cross [4]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG1, The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-28
Updated: 2010-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quasar/pseuds/Quasar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Salvaging equipment, people, and relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cross Country

**Author's Note:**

> First posted February, 2008. Reading other installments in the series first is recommended.

The Daedalus was a hulk, drifting derelict and airless in an eccentric orbit. The only light on it as they approached was the greenish-yellow light of the Atlantis sun. There was something eerie about the ship growing slowly larger in their viewscreen.

"It's like that scene from Jaws," John whispered. "You know, when they come up on the fishing boat in the middle of the night -- no lights, no movement . . . and then!"

"Oh man, I do _not_ want to think about half-eaten heads popping out at us!" Blair groaned from behind him.

"Get used to the idea, Chief," said Ellison grimly. "There'll be plenty of bodies on board."

Rodney, sitting in the co-pilot's seat (although he'd refused to take control for more than a few minutes, while they were still in atmosphere), was more intent on the body of the ship itself. "The damage is bad," he said, "but there might still be some shield generators intact on the rear end, there."

"They call that the stern, Rodney," John told him. "Even I know that."

"Right right," Rodney snapped, "avast ye lubbers and keelhaul that . . . oh my god."

The ship had been spinning silently on its lonely path as they flew closer, and now it was coming around to an angle where they could see the _real_ damage. It was more than bad; the Daedalus had been essentially cut in two. Only a few twisted girders still linked the long prow of the ship to the larger body in the stern, and the almost-disconnected portion was folded back in a vee along the belly of the ship. It was as if the ship were a child's toy that some bully had grabbed and squeezed out of shape.

It looked like the bully had applied some matches as well, because there were scorch marks everywhere, and gaping holes. There was no leaking atmosphere, though -- all the air was long gone. And hardly any floating debris was still co-moving with the bulk of the ship. It was just a single quiet corpse of what had once been an intergalactic spaceship, blasted by the Wraith at the end of her maiden voyage.

Lieutenant Hailey came forward from the rear compartment, pointing to various features and murmuring to Rodney about what might be recoverable. John noticed Ellison stiffen a little bit, but he didn't tell her to sit down. After all, it wasn't as if she'd _willingly_ become a spy for the Trust. Ellison and Sandburg were just particularly touchy on the subject, that was all.

Rodney had good reason to be touchy too, but he seemed more ready to consider Hailey a victim rather than a collaborator. Maybe that was because of the way his own body had been taken over for the use of the Trust. But when it came down to it, threatening a person's mother, however nasty, was just not in the same league as implanting someone with a Goa'uld. Some part of John thought a smart gal like Hailey should have been able to come up with a way around the scheme, and he thought maybe Rodney was too quick to forgive.

Rodney had insisted Hailey would be invaluable on this mission, though. She certainly had the right skills and experience, and she seemed to be sincere enough in helping set a trap for the Trust. So she'd been brought along, together with one of the few remaining members of the Daedalus engineering team, a Sergeant Bukich.

Rodney had been pressing for a salvage mission to the Daedalus since the day he set foot on Atlantis. The higher-ups had refused him for a number of good reasons including low expected pay-off and high risks to the people doing the salvaging. The expedition only had one space suit, since they hadn't really expected to need any at all and had room for only the most important supplies when they stepped through the gate. With only one suit, no one would be able to go to the aid of the salvager if trouble came up -- which was only too likely when wandering around a broken-down wreck.

Then just over a week ago, Team Ellison's ongoing exploration of the city had turned up a storeroom full of Ancient-made pressure suits in a variety of sizes and plumbing arrangements. The scientists had studied the suits and eventually concluded what Rodney had guessed at first sight: the suits were designed for use in space, underwater, or in toxic environments. Now they could send a whole team to the Daedalus, so the risks were a lot lower. And Rodney insisted to anyone who would listen that the payoff would be bigger than anticipated, as well.

"All right, boys and girls," came Captain O'Neill's voice over the radio. "You know the drill: we're here for recovery of equipment and bodies. We go in pairs. Everybody has a buddy, and nobody's buddy leaves their buddy alone, got it?"

"Yes, sir," John replied dutifully.

"Sheppard, looks like the starboard fighter bay is caved in, so we'll head on over to the port side."

They found the other fighter bay gaping open, empty of all its flock. There was more than enough room for two Gateships to land side by side. It wasn't really a "landing" since the Daedalus had no power and therefore no gravity. But the scientists had expected this and equipped both Gateships with magnetic docking clamps, which worked well enough. Once they settled, John turned the gravity inside the Gateship down to twenty-five percent so the transition would be easier, then started getting his suit ready.

The Ancient version was less bulky and more comfortable than NASA's space suits, that was certain, but John was thinking maybe he would like a little more bulk in between him and the utterly hostile, alien environment out there. He'd been told the Ancient suits were actually very sophisticated, but it felt like little more than a wetsuit with a fancy collar. There wasn't even a proper helmet, just a shield generated by the collar mechanism. It made for great views, but John felt like he was stepping out into space half-naked.

"I hate this color," he muttered, smoothing the pale-green softer-than-neoprene stretch fabric down his chest.

"Dahling, thea-green ith _tho_ ten thouthand yearth ago," Blair shot back, making John giggle nervously.

"All right," Rodney said, with the officious tone in his voice that told John he was also really nervous. "We're using the rear compartment as an airlock, but we're going to conserve air by having it pumped into reserve tanks instead of just opening the hatch and letting it all spill out. That means we'll have to wait back here a couple of minutes before we open --"

"Fine, get on with it," Ellison growled. Another one feeling the tension, apparently.

The minutes passed with John trying not to be too obvious about checking and re-checking his headshield. He could tell it was okay because his ears didn't even pop as the air in the Gateship got thinner, but his eyes told him there was nothing between him and -- well, nothing. Gradually he stopped hearing the others' conversation directly through the air and could only hear them if he thought his radio on. The suit's controls were intuitive and convenient -- at least for John, O'Neill, Rodney, and Hailey. The other members of the party, who didn't have the Ancient gene, would have to leave their radios on all the time.

Finally Rodney nodded and let down the hatch. One by one they stepped to the back of the Gateship and turned on their magnetic boots. Blair missed a step and nearly went floating away, but Ellison caught him instantly. Rodney wasn't the only one breathing hard and looking wild-eyed by the time they were all assembled in the fighter bay.

O'Neill's team was waiting for them; he gave them a once-over and a quick nod. "All right. We're going to start with the shield generators because they're easiest. During approach, we noticed six of them that might be salvageable -- four on this side of the ship. Sheppard and McKay, you go for number twenty-three. Grodin and Emmagan, twenty-one. Cadman and Bukich, you get nineteen -- it's just forward of the fighter bay. Hailey and I will go all the way forward and try for fifteen. Depending on our success with these, we'll decide whether to go after the ones on the starboard side." He turned to the remaining pair. "Ellison, Sandburg, you know what you're doing?"

Ellison just nodded. It had been worked out in the briefing; Ellison would apply his special senses (which were partly muted by the suit and the lack of air, but not completely) to scouting the ship. The two would check on the status of salvage items that couldn't be seen from outside the ship, and would note the location of bodies for later retrieval.

"Okay," O'Neill continued. "Stay attached to your buddy; stay attached to the ship. Be careful out there, people, and I mean that!"

Thus began a very long and arduous day. John and Rodney picked their way aft to generator twenty-three by leapfrogging around each other; one would stay magnetically attached to the ship while the other pushed himself out and swung around on a tether. For John it was a little like flying; for Rodney it was clearly a culmination of all his phobias, and he was muttering calming phrases to himself the whole time. He was determined not to back down, though, so they made reasonably good time.

Their suits were just as effective as promised, but it still got pretty warm when the port side of the ship rotated into the sunlight, and cold and dark when it turned the other way. John's headshield changed opacity automatically, but he squinted anyway in the sharp-edged glare.

They found the generator had some damage that wasn't visible from a distance, but still too serious to repair. So they worked their way forward again to help Teyla and Grodin with generator twenty-one. That was successful, and the extra hands turned out to be useful in hauling the bulky generator back to the fighter bay. The object -- a little larger than a car engine -- had no weight, but it still had mass and inertia. The first time John tried to tug it to a stop, he was pulled right off his magnetic feet and was only saved by Rodney's quick thinking in grabbing a handhold to supplement the grip of his own boots.

Cadman and Bukich were less lucky and ended up floating off into emptiness, both of them sounding pretty panicky over the radio. The suits had no jet-packs on them. John, since he was nearly back at the fighter bay anyway, was the one to fly a Gateship out and pick up first the two gone overboard, then their wayward shield generator.

John and Rodney, O'Neill and Hailey traveled to the starboard side and retrieved generator twenty-four, since twenty-two turned out to have what looked like a meteor-hole in it. Then O'Neill flew a load of four generators and eight filled body bags back to Atlantis, along with Bukich (who was getting close to a nervous breakdown). Hailey and Cadman were tethered to each other, and everyone went looking for more bodies according to Ellison's directions. With the gravity turned off, the dead had drifted into corners, tangled in overhead cables, piled against the outer walls of the ship as it spun slowly.

Most of them had died before decompression; there were burns, shrapnel wounds, crushed skulls, body parts separated by explosions. John had expected frost on the bodies, like in the movies, but they all looked still and perfectly preserved. They had been kept in a cold, airless environment and shaded from the sunlight for over a year, and they looked as if they had died just minutes before, except that the colors were a little off. They were pale and greyish, almost purple in certain lights. And they were stiff, but not bloated. One woman, who Ellison said had a broken neck, looked perfect and untouched, and it seemed profoundly wrong to zip her into a body bag.

Cadman, who was technically in command, bullied everyone into taking a break about four hours after their arrival. They sat in the forward compartment of the second Gateship; Blair and Teyla chose the floor, since there were only four seats. They ate MREs, and John gave his dessert to Rodney, and no one talked much except for Rodney, who was still hoping they would find something more that could be salvaged. Gradually, he got Hailey and Grodin interested in the possibilities as well, and the rest of them started to think beyond the grim business of body recovery.

They progressed to the forward compartments, moving very carefully around the twisted masses of wreckage where the ship had nearly broken in two. These had been the last sections to decompress, and they had to stop often to pry open hatches that had remained sealed even without power. Here they found other causes of death: a few who had suffocated, a pair with bullet wounds (friendly fire or suicide pact? John wondered), then a string of withered husks that Teyla confirmed were Wraith victims. After the ship was disabled, the Wraith had boarded to look for survivors. John, helping to bag one of the shriveled bodies, thought he was beginning to understand why Colonel Sheppard had shot his commanding officer. They were starting to run out of body bags, so some of the Wraith-fed bodies got doubled up.

In the next corridor, they found a Wraith riddled with bullet holes and snarling defiance even in death. Half the corridor was smeared with its black blood.

Teyla frowned at the corpse. "I believe this is the one that attacked Captain O'Neill," she said darkly. She caught the Wraith by one ankle, hauled it back to the nearest gaping hole in the side of the ship, and tossed it out into space.

Every few minutes, someone reported finding another corpse over the radio. There were two more Wraith, but John didn't see them.

While they were exploring one reasonably-intact room, John found one very odd-looking body in a corner. "Is this, um, a baby Wraith or something? I mean, it's not human . . ."

Rodney tugged on the tether between them, pulling himself closer while John braced himself on a handful of cables. "Oh! It's Hermiod."

"Captain's pet?" John guessed. "Ship's mascot?"

The Ancient headshield made it entirely too easy for Rodney to stare at John like he was crazy. "He was the Asgard liaison. He ran and maintained the equipment that we weren't supposed to know about."

"Oh. An Asgard, huh?" John had heard about them, but he hadn't seen any pictures. Somehow, this wasn't what he'd expected. "Is it supposed to be, um, naked?"

Rodney huffed. "They don't have sex -- in fact, they don't have genitalia -- so they don't care about clothes."

The alien's crotch had been in shadow, but John moved his flashlight without thinking when Rodney mentioned genitalia. "That . . . is really disturbing, Rodney."

"I don't know anything about their funeral practices. Well, I know they don't normally let themselves just die; they move on to another body. Maybe O'Neill will know -- he has some Asgard friends."

"Wait. He's _friends_ with these guys? Didn't one of them, like, do illegal genetic experiments on him?"

"Yes, but since Captain O'Neill _is_ an illegal genetic experiment, I don't suppose he's entirely opposed to Asgard methods. We'd better put Hermiod in a bag, anyway."

"He'll have to share with someone, then." John shivered at the thought that, if he stayed in this line of work, his own corpse might one day be zipped into a bag with a naked alien.

At the opposite end of the same room, Rodney began purring over a console of really bizarre-looking stuff. John had thought the Ancient crystal technology was weird enough, but this console, as he floated upside-down near the ceiling, looked more like an interrupted game of Chinese checkers or a zen rock garden in psychedelic colors. Rodney called Hailey on the radio, and pretty soon the two of them were digging into the guts of the Asgard control console, trying to dismantle it in one only-slightly-damaged piece for return to Atlantis.

John wasn't sure exactly how it happened, but somehow he ended up tethered to Cadman and a hauling a long row of double-packed body bags back to the fighter bay. He tried to ask Rodney if he was _sure_ it would be okay, but Rodney wasn't getting the hint. Hailey just gave him a disgusted look and said, "No, I'm not going to kill, maim, hurt, or suborn him. Go on. We'll be here when you get back."

They reached the fighter bay with their grisly cargo just as O'Neill's Gateship touched down again. Ellison and Sandburg appeared while they were loading the ship and reported the aft section had been cleared of all the human remains they could find.

"The hyperdrive is in pieces," Ellison added. "No hope there. Some of the normal-space thrusters look intact, but I gather those aren't as valuable?"

O'Neill shook his head. "The propulsion isn't as good as the Gateships, and they need fuel we don't have."

"Isn't that true for the 302 as well?" John asked. During the briefing, he'd followed the discussion of a possible recoverable spacegoing fighter jet with interest.

O'Neill shrugged at this. "Actually, the boffins say they can make jet fuel using some of the Ancient chemistry sets lying around. But the thrusters use naquadria, and _that_ will not be easy to come by."

"I don't think we can get to the 302 anyway," said Ellison. "The whole starboard side fighter bay is caved in. If the fighter's still there, it must have been cr--" Ellison stiffened.

"Jim? What's up?" Blair laid a hand on Ellison's back.

"What _was_ that?" Ellison looked at the rest of them quickly. "You didn't feel that?"

"We didn't feel anything," Blair said. "What was it?"

"It felt like . . ." Ellison twisted his head slowly as if he could retrace the sensation by smell. "Like an explosion. Or a collision. Or maybe both. In the forward section."

John felt ice spreading through his veins as he told his radio to link with Rodney's. "Rodney, what's going on? Rodney? Answer me, Rodney!" He headed for the nearest exit from the bay, his magnetic boots clomping unbearably slowly across the floor.

"Sheppard, wait!" O'Neill called.

John pretended his radio wasn't working on that channel. "Rodney! Talk to me, dammit!"

"John . . ." Rodney's voice was husky and shaking. He made a weak cough, then groaned. "Need help . . . Hailey's--"

"I will _kill_ her!" John growled, and broke into the best run he could manage.

Cadman either wasn't following or just wasn't moving fast enough, so when John reached the end of his tether he just unhooked it from his belt. Ellison and O'Neill both yelled something, but John wasn't listening. Halfway to the door he came to a piece of heavy machinery bolted to the deck. He grabbed it, turned off the magnets in his boots, and pushed off the object as if he were diving. His aim wasn't perfect; he hit the wall just above and left of the door, but it was close enough that he could grab the frame and swing himself around.

The corridors were easier; he just kept pushing himself along, bouncing from wall to wall and using whatever handholds came his way. And of course stairwells were ridiculously simple to fly up or down in microgravity, with railings everywhere to grab onto or push off from. Over the radio, he heard O'Neill talking to Teyla and Grodin, who were in the forward section near the bridge. They had felt the jar also and were on their way to Hermiod's lab to find out what was going on.

Rodney didn't call in again, nor did Hailey.

When he got to the wrecked area where the ship had nearly split apart, John barely paused until he bounced off a twisted section of hull and forced himself to slow down. It wouldn't do him any good to arrive in pieces, or to get into worse trouble and distract the others from helping Rodney. It seemed agonizing to slow down so much, but he must still have been moving pretty fast, because he arrived at the lab at the same time as Teyla and Grodin.

The pervasive eeriness of the dead ship was made worse here by a flashlight floating lazily across the room, spinning like a beacon and casting weird moving shadows everywhere. The console Rodney and Hailey had been working on was half-detached from the deck -- or maybe from a continuation of itself that went right through the deck. John caught the flash of a pale-green suit and aimed himself at it before he really understood what he was seeing: Rodney's legs disappearing into a gap that seemed much too small to hold him.

After his hasty push off the doorframe, John had to catch himself by grabbing on to the console. It shifted, and Rodney groaned into the radio. John pulled himself around and down the far side of the console and found Rodney trapped in a tiny space, his eyes fluttering as he tried to stay conscious. Still alive.

"Where are you hurt?" John demanded at once.

Rodney stuttered, gasping. "Can't -- breathe --"

The half-detached equipment was squeezing Rodney's torso like a spring-loaded trap, John realized. Immediately he braced his feet on the deck and pulled up on the bottom edge of the console as hard as he could.

Rodney gulped for air. "Hailey. Where is --"

"She's over here!" Grodin said over the radio. "She's breathing, but I think she's unconscious."

"What happened, Rodney?" John asked, shifting his feet for better leverage. He looked around for anything he could wedge into the gap, but he couldn't see anything within reach.

"Electrical discharge," Rodney gasped. "We were disconnecting -- didn't know there was residual charge. Hailey realized, last minute . . . tried to push me away, but . . . I got stuck."

"No kidding, buddy," John said, able to pretend calm now that he had Rodney, alive and talking, right in front of him.

"She saved me."

"Fine, fine, I won't kill her," John promised. "I'll even bring her Jell-o in the infirmary, or whatever. Are you okay aside from this thing trying to eat you?"

Rodney moved a little and winced. "Not sure. Think maybe . . . broken ribs?"

"But your suit is intact?" John asked urgently.

Rodney's eyes went glassy for a moment as he queried the suit's internal controls. "Yes. Air supply limited, but I still have over an hour."

"Good." John's breath whooshed out with relief.

"Sheppard," called Grodin over the radio, "we can't tell how badly Hailey is hurt, because we can't feel for a pulse. Will your gene let you interface with her suit?"

"I think so," John replied, "but I can't move away just now. Is there something we can use to wedge this gap open?"

A pause, then Teyla answered, "I believe this might work."

She was there a moment later with what John realized was a section of twisted and scorched deck grille. After a little fumbling, they got it to brace the two pieces of machinery apart enough for Rodney to breathe. Teyla hunted for something else to lever the gap open further while John pushed across the room to where Grodin hovered over Hailey.

John grabbed the lieutenant's suit by the collar and concentrated a moment. "The suit's fine; she's got plenty of air." It was a little trickier to access the past records, but then they scrolled through his mind so clearly he thought Grodin must be able to see them. "Okay yeah, I think it was an electrical shock. Her heartbeat was erratic for a couple minutes afterward, but it's steady now."

"She's still unconscious, though," Grodin pointed out. "We should get her back to Atlantis right away."

"Rodney too; he might have some broken ribs." John aimed his light back at the console. Instead of trying to lever the gap, Teyla seemed to be continuing the work of disconnecting the console entirely, with Rodney directing her between gasps. "Hey -- Rodney, you're sure that thing isn't going to shock you again?"

Rodney's disembodied legs twitched. "It won't. It was just a coincidence that the charge buffer was full, and we happened to short the connection. The buffer's empty now."

"What is _that_?" said Grodin, sounding alarmed.

John turned to see what the scientist was looking at and followed his gaze down to his own leg. The green fabric of his suit was darkly stained and torn across the outside of his thigh.

"Uh," said John. "I bumped into something, but I didn't think . . . I don't feel dead."

Grodin was peering at the tear in the suit. "It looks like there's an underlayer which is intact," he said slowly, bringing his light closer. "But if you bled that much, surely it must have torn all the way through."

John accessed the suit diagnostics. "It says there was some pressure loss, but it managed to block off the area." He'd been dimly aware of the suit feeling too tight around his hip and crotch, but it hadn't really penetrated his worry over Rodney.

"This is incredible," Grodin gushed. "There are fibers stretched across the opening -- they seem to be growing." He looked up at John in astonishment. "I think it's healing itself."

"Oh, is _that_ what that means." John caught the puzzled look and shrugged. "There was a part of the diagnostics that I didn't understand, but yeah, I guess the suit is self-repairing. Did we know it could do that?"

"I certainly didn't." Grodin braced himself on John's shoulders and straightened. "And we don't know how effective or reliable it is. We'd better get you into a pressurized environment in case that patch gives way."

"Sheppard, what's going on?" came O'Neill's voice over the radio. John realized belatedly that he'd been using a restricted channel to talk to the Rodney and Grodin, so the others back in the fighter bay didn't know what was happening. "Teyla, Peter -- report!"

"We're all right," said Grodin quickly. "At least, everyone's alive. Leftenant Hailey is unconscious from a severe electric shock. Dr. McKay was pinned by a piece of machinery and may have broken ribs, but he's conscious." He glanced across the room to where Teyla was working. "We've nearly got him free now. And Mr. Sheppard's suit is torn, but it seems to be maintaining pressure. I think all of them should get back to Atlantis as soon as possible."

"I can fly," John insisted at once, not wanting his favorite Gateship abandoned on this hulk. "I'll be fine once I get out of this vacuum."

O'Neill snorted. "You'll be lucky if we let you off the ground again. What did I say about staying with your buddy?" he growled.

John winced. "Sorry, sir, I was in a hurry," he muttered.

"Fine, Ellison can deal with you. Meantime, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm bringing a Gateship around to the broken section, and I'll look for a clear area where I can bring it in close to a corridor. That way you don't have to take wounded people through the obstacle course in the middle, got that?"

"Sounds good," said Grodin.

"Wait," Rodney gasped, pushing on the console which had pinned him. It was fully disconnected now and floated slowly up and away.

"What's wrong?" John asked, itching to get to Rodney's side but not wanting to push the console right back into him. There was no other good place to land just yet.

Rodney twisted around so that his head was facing them, peeking out from the edge of the floating console. Despite a sheen of sweat and occasional grimaces of pain, his face was alight with excitement. "If O'Neill can line a Gateship up with _this_ corridor --" he stabbed a finger toward the nearest door "-- then you can float the console right down the hallway and into his hatch!"

John blinked. "Rodney, we don't care about salvage right now. We're just trying to get everyone home alive."

"But this is important!" Rodney insisted. "There are two Gateships. One can take the wounded -- us -- back to Atlantis, while the console gets loaded onto the other. Peter can do it. Peter, you realize how important this could be, don't you? To have the Asgard beaming technology at our disposal --"

"Is it functional?" Grodin asked, eying the heavy equipment which was now drifting into the middle of the room.

"Well . . . mostly. I'm sure we can repair it. Hailey thinks so, too. Thought so." Rodney frowned at the limp figure floating in the corner. "Peter, you _have_ to bring this back with you!"

"I'll talk to Jack about it," Grodin said grudgingly. "That thing won't fit in a stairwell, though. If we can't take it straight out, it'll have to stay behind."

"Yes, whatever, I'm sure you can work it out. Thank you!" Rodney gasped. He grabbed the edge of the console and started to push himself up past it, then froze with a little half-grunt, half-whimper. "Okay, maybe I could use a little help getting to the Gateship myself."

Grodin sighed. "Teyla, help me get the three of them tethered to each other --"

"I can make it around on my own," John protested.

Grodin gave him an impatient look. "You're not to use those leg muscles at all while the suit is trying to repair itself. Just . . . hang there and let us do the work."

It turned out to be fairly quick and straightforward to get them all back to the Gateship. The broad corridor right outside the lab curved left and then right, then Grodin persuaded one last doorseal to give way and they were looking out into space -- with a Gateship hovering right outside.

"It's almost a straight shot. You can get the console out, easy!" Rodney insisted.

"We'll try," was all Grodin would promise.

Once they were in the Gateship, O'Neill took them back to the fighter bay for some discussion and adjustment of plans. John declined to take his suit off to have the cut in his leg examined and bandaged, insisting he was fine and the bleeding had stopped. Ellison confirmed that the suit was essentially regrowing over the damaged area. Hailey regained consciousness briefly, which seemed like a good sign even though she didn't remember what had happened and dropped back to sleep a few minutes later. Rodney still complained of pain in his ribs, but he was breathing well enough. Ellison felt Rodney's chest briefly and said with confidence that the ribs were only cracked, not broken.

O'Neill decided it was best if all of Team Ellison, plus Hailey, headed back to Atlantis now. The rear compartment of their Gateship was full of body bags, but there was room enough for one person to strap down in the back. O'Neill's team would remain to pick up the few remaining bodies and possible salvage -- Rodney reminded them of the important console just waiting to be loaded onto a Gateship, and O'Neill made a sour face but nodded.

Ellison himself ended up being the one to sit back with the bodies, since John had the pilot's seat, both Rodney and Hailey were wounded, and Blair was apparently more squeamish than one would expect for an ex-cop. Blair did try to argue his husband out of it, but Ellison was firm.

They were clear of the Daedalus, done with all the maneuvering and on a course for Atlantis -- already noticeably farther away as the ship swung out on its long, eccentric orbit -- when Ellison came into the front compartment. For such a tall, muscular man, he moved very quietly, and John didn't notice his approach until Ellison rested a hand on the back of the pilot's seat.

"Jim? What do you see, man?" Blair asked.

Ellison raised a hand slowly and pointed at the planet -- where exactly, John couldn't tell. The ocean where Atlantis floated was around the curve of the planet in the late afternoon sunlight, and the island where the Genii had been exiled was still in darkness. All John could see right now was a lot of water and the western half of the planet's largest continent, where the Athosians had settled.

"That scar," Ellison murmured. "Where did that come from?"

John looked at the continent and had no idea what he was talking about, since they were still pretty far away from the planet. He could pick out the path of a large river. There were some mountain ranges that looked almost like scars, and one deep inlet or bay that penetrated hundreds of miles into the coastline. None of those were likely to have formed in the recent past, so John was baffled.

"We can't see it, Jim," said Blair. "Is it important?"

Ellison shook his head, but more in puzzlement than negation. "It might be. I don't know. It might be."

"Come on back and sit down, Jim," Blair encouraged gently. "Do you want my seat?"

The two of them degenerated into married-couple squabbles, and John ignored them as he pushed the little ship toward Atlantis. He was tired, and his leg hurt, and he would be very glad to be home again.

* * *

John was dreading the moment when Ellison would chew him out for disobeying orders, ignoring senior officers, and haring off on his own. The situation was so familiar John could picture it without even trying: Ellison would call John to his office -- or maybe Weir's office, maybe even with Weir or Caldwell present -- and put on that disappointed squint and shake his head with a sigh. He'd enumerate everything John had done wrong, all the rules he'd broken and the perfectly valid reasoning behind those rules and how it was bad for discipline if John was allowed to get away with such things. Or worse, maybe he'd make John list off his mistakes and transgressions himself. He'd say John was too impulsive, too arrogant and overconfident and all that jazz. Maybe he'd throw out some pseudo-psychological bullshit about John having a dislike of authority or subconscious suicidal impulses or whatever.

As for punishment, John wasn't sure what Ellison might do. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be fired for this first black mark, although he'd probably get warnings about what would happen the next time. Even if they wanted to fire him, they couldn't kick him off Atlantis because there was no way back to Earth right now -- so they might as well get some use out of him while he was stuck here. Grounding John would be an effective punishment in the sense that it would make him angry and miserable, but given the shortage of decent pilots around here it would essentially mean grounding the whole team. Likewise, kicking John off the team probably meant breaking the team up, and John was pretty sure Ellison wouldn't want to do that. Maybe he'd get a couple of unpleasant work assignments, although technically he wasn't in the normal duty rotations with the marines or the scientists. So he was guessing a stern lecture and a little ritual humiliation in front of his bosses would be all, this time.

He was thrown off-balance when Ellison didn't try to catch him that evening after John and Rodney were released from the infirmary. Ellison had been around earlier until Dr. Beckett assured him that both John and Rodney would be just fine. John had six stitches in his leg and some really impressive discoloration around the gash that wasn't as painful as it looked. Rodney had some ugly bruising on his ribs that he said was much _more_ painful than it looked, especially when Beckett wrapped it up. They hobbled together back to their room and saw no sign of Ellison along the way.

Normally Rodney slept on the left side of the bed, but after much fussing and shifting and complaining, they established that he was least uncomfortable lying on the other half, curled on his right side, with John spooned up behind him. John had to keep his upper arm down by their hips and remember not to rest it across Rodney's aching chest.

John's leg didn't hurt -- much -- but he found he couldn't make himself relax. Every time he closed his eyes he saw Rodney floating untethered into space, or ripped apart by an explosion. He _felt_ the explosion shivering through his boots, as Ellison must have done, and he tried to run only to find he couldn't get purchase on the deck. He found Rodney pinned by the split-open console as if it had eaten him, his skin gray and eyes dry and lifeless.

John jerked himself back from the brink of sleep for the third time, and Rodney groaned wearily next to him. "Would you cut it out?"

"What? I'm not doing anything," John protested. "I'm not even moving."

"You're not sleeping, either." With a huff and a whimper, Rodney turned carefully onto his back, twisting his neck to the side to look at John. "What's wrong?"

John shook his head. "I think my brain is just processing the day. Lot of new stuff -- all that bouncing around in zero gee, you know."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "That was free fall, not zero gee. There's no such thing, really, but the closest you could get would be interstellar space. Or intergalactic space, maybe."

"It was different, anyway. Just a couple of magnets keeping us stuck to the ship, and an invisible shield keeping us breathing?"

Rodney shuddered. "Don't remind me."

"I guess my brain's having trouble letting go of it." John flashed on an image of Rodney floating away, his arms windmilling, his face contorted as the helmet-shield failed and capillaries burst across his cheeks . . . "I don't know why it keeps bugging me," he choked, telling himself firmly that it wasn't true, it hadn't happened, it wasn't _going_ to happen. He shouldn't have accepted those painkillers from Beckett -- maybe that was what was making his imagination so vivid, all of a sudden.

Rodney grumbled, "Well, _your_ brain is keeping _me_ awake. Can't you think about something else?"

"That's what I've been trying to do!"

"No, you've been trying _not_ to think about the Daedalus," Rodney said.

How the ship had been bent back on itself, how the metal screams must have been carried along the girders as it was nearly torn in two, how the debris and air and bodies both dead and not-yet-dead must have streamed out into the monstrous nothing -- John bit back a pained gasp. He was definitely not going to be taking this drug ever again.

"That never works," Rodney went on, too tired or doped to notice his distress. "Believe me, I know about hyperactive brain processes. You have to give yourself something else to think about. Something interesting enough to hold your attention, but not too complicated. How do you normally get yourself relaxed to go to sleep?"

John didn't have to think about that very hard. His mouth quirked. "I can think of one thing . . ."

Rodney raised a brow. "Well? What is it?" Either he was in a very strange mood -- Rodney, coyly playing dumb? -- or the drugs were messing with his brain as well as John's, because he didn't seem to be getting it.

And maybe Rodney was right about the whole distraction idea, beacuse it was a relief just to show Rodney what he had in mind, to kiss away Rodney's murmurs of protest and get him to lie flat on the bed. A relief to think about nothing but his hands skimming tenderly across Rodney's bruised skin, about the taste of Rodney's cock and the optimum angle for sucking him deep.

When Rodney came with a groan halfway between pain and pleasure, he stared at John, waiting. "If you make me laugh, I'll kill you."

John shifted up the bed to lie next to him. "You won't laugh," he promised, and started petting Rodney's hair. For some reason, that always seemed to soothe his post-sexual hysteria. John had noted the trick even though he usually wasn't very interested in calming Rodney down.

"What about you?" Rodney murmured around an enormous yawn.

"I'm fine," John said. He was half-hard against Rodney's hip, but it wasn't a problem. This wasn't really about sex.

It wasn't until Rodney's snuffles were well on their way to full-blown snores that John realized, no, it hadn't been sex; it had been worship. It had been love.

That thought kept him awake long after his dick had softened.

* * *

John didn't see their team leader at breakfast the next morning. He wasn't sure if he should be nervous waiting for the other shoe to drop, or if maybe Ellison wasn't going to make an issue out of it. That seemed unlikely, but a part of him relaxed just a little. Later, when Ellison caught him in the weight room, he felt like he really should have seen it coming.

The exercise options in Atlantis were pretty limited, since the expedition had not had the capacity to bring along a lot of heavy, bulky machines with them just to keep people in shape. So there was running (stair-running when the weather was bad or the long circuit of the piers got boring), sparring (hand-to-hand, fake knife fights, various martial arts, and Teyla's Athosian stick-fighting technique), and weight-lifting with a variety of equipment people had cobbled together over the past two years. John thought it was a shame no one had set up one of the enclosed harbors for swimming, but the water here was a little cold by his standards in any case.

Beckett had ordered no running, stair-climbing, or any other serious exertion until the stitches came out of John's leg in ten to twelve days. That put a crimp in John's attempts to get himself back into decent shape, which he'd been working ever since he accepted Weir's job offer. This was obviously a dangerous place, and he had to be ready for anything, and besides that he'd be damned if he admitted he couldn't keep up with a man ten years older than he was. So when his preferred running and karate practice were ruled out, John headed for the weight room. Which -- surprise, surprise -- turned out to be one of Ellison's favorite hangouts.

He should have guessed, John thought. Ellison was just the kind of older gay man who'd be obsessed with his own body image. But no, that wasn't fair; Ellison didn't primp or pose. But a man in his late forties didn't keep a physique like that without plenty of work, and apparently a lot of that work took place here.

John sighed and headed over to the chin-bar to start out.

"Sheppard," grunted Ellison, just finishing up some bench presses.

"Ellison." John could still get his chin over the bar, but not as many times as he used to. He stopped when his arms started to shake, rested them a minute, then repeated the set.

"Don't usually see you in here." Ellison changed weights on a contraption that apparently let him do flies.

"Doc said --" John inhaled on the down-move. "No running."

"Hmm. When your leg is better, we should run together." Ellison apparently didn't need to time his breathing with the weight.

"Could do that." John dropped to his feet and rolled his shoulders, wondering if he was up to a third set.

"I go around dawn. Northwest pier, usually."

That was when most of the Marines ran, but they favored the piers on the east side. John had gone out a couple of times with Markham and Cadman, but they had jeered at his out-of-shape, ex-Air Force pace. And lately he'd been sleeping a little later anyway, his schedule gradually drifting into synch with Rodney's.

"Okay," John said, reaching for the bar again. Just a couple more reps.

"You might want to try some sparring, too. Teyla's got a killer routine with those sticks of hers, and Ford does judo sessions."

"I've been doing karate," John grunted. "With Bates, sometimes Cadman."

"Ah." Ellison was silent a minute. "Been trying to get Sandburg in on some practice sessions, but he says the testosterone makes him dizzy. Even in Teyla's class."

"Sounds like something Rodney would say," John gasped, feet back on the mat.

"Should get those two some defense training, though," said Ellison. "Gotta keep our geeks safe, huh?"

John didn't respond, since he had a bad feeling about where that was heading. Instead, he studied the row of machines. Leg presses, leg lifts . . . he headed for the bench press.

"Listen, about the other day," Ellison began, sounding uncomfortable but determined.

So John was right about where it was heading. He kept his eyes down, taking weights off the bar.

"I know what it's like when someone you love is in danger. I know what it's like needing to be there, needing to keep him safe."

Too light. John put ten pounds back on.

"But you have to keep your head. You need to stay present. This is a dangerous world out here."

John crossed to the other side of the bar, balancing it.

"You can't just throw yourself into trouble without thinking first. You hear me, Sheppard?"

John gripped the clamp tightly to keep his hand from shaking. "I don't leave men behind," he said in a low voice.

The pause then was too long. John realized he was responding to the last CO who'd reamed him out, instead of following Ellison's cues.

"Okay," Ellison said. "But you don't throw other men away just for a principle. You look for the best way to go at it, something that will work without getting more people killed. Am I right?"

That was the idea. That was the ideal John had tried to stick to, back when he had responsibilities and a command of his own. But sometimes it didn't really work out that way.

"Sheppard. Look at me."

John dropped his hands and came slowly, painfully, to attention.

Ellison looked more worried than pissed. "As an officer, you wouldn't throw men away on a hopeless situation. You wouldn't send men into danger without thinking about all the angles. _Am I right?_"

John nodded stiffly. "Yessir." Except for those times when he'd done exactly that, and gotten his men -- his friends -- killed.

"That goes the same for you. You don't throw yourself away. You don't jump into a situation without thinking about it. And you _listen_ to me and anyone else who might have important information. I don't care who's hurt, you will keep your head and use reasonable judgment. You got that?"

"Yes, sir." John wanted to close his eyes against the images flickering there, but he knew it wouldn't help. His hands were fisted at his sides.

Ellison shook his head wearily. "Right. Fine. You can go back to --" He frowned at the bar John had been tinkering with. "No, forget it. You'll tear something if you try to press that much weight. Get out of here. Lie down and rest that leg. I'll talk to you again in a few days."

* * *

John wandered around for a while, but it was hard to walk far in Atlantis without climbing stairs, and transporters just didn't work for brooding. He did try a couple of flights of stairs, but the deep ache in his leg told him Beckett had been right. He ended up at the lounge near the mess hall (where he'd slept in the other Atlantis, where they'd confronted Hailey in this Atlantis) and collapsed on one of the Ancient sofa-things.

"John." A hand was on his shoulder. "Wake up."

"Huh?" He looked around. Oh yeah, the lounge.

Blair was bending over him. "You okay?"

John rubbed a hand down his face. "I'm fine. What's up?"

"Rodney's on his way."

"Rodney's here," said Ellison from the doorway.

And then Rodney was bursting in. "Oh my God, I thought you were dead!"

"Huh?" John sat up, remembered the cut in his thigh, and adjusted his position cautiously.

"You didn't show up for dinner. I thought you'd thrown a blood clot, or fallen down the stairs and broken a leg or your neck or something. I had half the science division searching, and Grodin was checking the sensors, and then finally I thought of asking Ellison."

"I was right here," John said blearily. "What time is it?"

"It's past twenty-one! What have you been doing all day?"

"Sleeping, I guess." John frowned. "I must have been . . . tired." It was true, he hadn't slept much last night, but there was more to it than that. Maybe a delayed reaction to the painkillers from yesterday? He felt fuzzy-headed from sleeping so much during the day, and he'd been dreaming about . . . something really important. He couldn't quite remember.

Blair thumped Rodney on the shoulder. "So, I'm glad he's okay. Let us know if we can help again." He waved cheerily at John and headed for the door, where Ellison was standing and watching John with a suspicious expression. They had a quick whispered exchange and then disappeared.

"Never do that again!" Rodney was exclaiming.

"You don't own me," John snapped reflexively. He felt guilty almost at once.

"What? No, I mean -- I was worried!"

"Yeah." John rubbed his face again. "Sorry."

"Well, you should be! That was pretty inconsiderate of you, disappearing like that without a word."

Now John was rubbing his temples instead. "Look, I don't think now is the best time for this discussion."

"I mean, when you weren't there at lunch, and you weren't there at dinner --"

"McKay . . ."

"-- and I checked the room and you weren't there either, and no one had seen you since morning --"

John felt a kind of pressure building inside him.

"-- the least you could have done was left a note or an email or _something_ \--"

John erupted. "Dammit, Rick, I don't answer to you! You can't tell me what to do!"

Rodney stared as if John had grown an extra head. "Are you --"

"I'm fine, dammit!"

"-- sleeping with someone else?"

"What?" It was a complete non sequitur.

"You just called me Rick."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"I called you Rodney." Except his ears sort of remembered hearing the word 'Rick' come out of his mouth. That was the dream, he realized suddenly; he'd been dreaming about Holland and that horrible fight they had, and then the make-up sex. And then the next week Holland's chopper went down, and John disobeyed orders to go after him. Only in the dream, it was like they were stuck in that last fight and never moved past it.

Rodney was talking. "-- sleeping with this Rick person?"

John sighed. "He was . . . from before. Back on Earth."

"Oh. I didn't realize you left someone behind."

And that was so ironic John had to laugh or he'd cry. "I don't leave men behind."

From the steepening slant of his mouth, Rodney didn't get it. "You . . . miss him?"

"God, yes." More than three years later, he still did. John buried his face in his hands.

Rodney was silent for an uncharacteristically long minute.

"Look, Rodney, I don't think this is going to work," John finally said.

"This, what?"

"What are we doing here, anyway? I mean, did we think about this at all? It seems like it just happened."

"This . . . ?"

"Us. You and me. Does it even make any sense? I mean, Ellison and Sandburg, they've been together more than a decade. They're married, for God's sake. Next to them, we're . . . what are we even doing?"

"I thought we were . . . lovers?"

John gave a half-laugh, half-sob. "Love? I don't even know what love is -- do you? I'm no good at this sort of thing, Rodney."

"Are, are you . . . breaking up with me?" Rodney said in a small voice.

"I'm just saying, maybe we should cool it for little. Take a step back and --"

"Oh my God, you are breaking up with me!"

Rodney's expression of horror congealing into resignation worked like a mirror, forcing John to pay attention to his own words. It really did sound like a half-dozen bad breakups he remembered. But where he was sure every one of those women and men had been lying when they used such phrases to let him down 'gently,' he really did mean it with Rodney.

"Look, Rodney, I don't mean to . . . I don't want you to think . . . it's nothing you've done wrong, you've been great, I just --"

Rodney's mouth twisted. "Yeah, yeah, you know, the old 'it's not you, it's me' routine sort of lost its credibility around, I don't know, fifth grade?"

"No, Rodney, I'm serious --"

"Right, and you hope we can still be friends. Well, you know what, Sheppard? You can shove that plan right up your ass, 'cause you sure as hell won't be getting any of my body parts up there ever again. And you know what else? I'm keeping the bed you got me. And the room. You can find your own damn place to sleep. Maybe _Rick_ has room for you."

For a dizzying moment, as Rodney stomped toward the door, John thought he had just wished him dead. Then he realized Rodney hadn't picked up his clues about the real story, and thought he was having an affair right now with someone named Rick.

And that was bad enough. John knew only too vividly the hurt and betrayal Rodney was feeling now, knew how he would be reviewing every conversation they'd had, every occasion of lovemaking, and looking for lies everywhere. Except it wasn't lies: John had meant every moment of it, every tender caress. And that was what had scared him.

Maybe it was better for Rodney to think him a liar than to know him for the fucking coward he was.

* * *

That night, John stumbled back to the room where he (and Rodney) had slept for their first few weeks on Atlantis. He lay awake for hours on the bare mattress, mind going over everything he had said and should have said and wanted to say, and all the reasons why hurting Rodney a little bit now was better than what would inevitably happen further down the line. When he did sleep, John dreamed again of Holland and woke shouting.

* * *

"So what happened?" Blair demanded over breakfast -- an early breakfast, probably too early for Rodney to be up, but John was watching the entrance anyway.

He shrugged. "I'm not sure."

"What do you mean, not sure? You broke up with him, didn't you?"

"I don't know how it happened," John insisted. "It was . . . sort of an accident."

"Like a misunderstanding?"

"Well, sort of. I mean, I would say one thing and it's like he heard something else. He thinks I'm cheating on him with somebody here on Atlantis, just because I was thinking about . . ." John swallowed. "Somebody who's not around anymore."

"So clear it up! Tell him it was a mistake."

John fiddled with his fork. "I'm not sure that's a good idea."

Blair eyed him. "You want him to think you're cheating on him."

"No! But . . . maybe it's for the best, you know? Maybe, maybe we weren't really supposed to be together. It was just sort of . . . I don't know, convenient."

"But you guys were so good together!"

"Yeah, right. We have nothing in common."

Blair snorted. "You think Jim and I have a lot in common?"

"But you have this, this Sentinel thing keeping you together. You really belong with each other, like . . ." _Destiny_, John was thinking, but it sounded too much like a line from the back of a romance novel.

"We weren't always this secure, you know," Blair said. "I mean, from the start it felt like there was something, like we were really supposed to be together, you know? But it wasn't smooth and easy. One time, Jim kicked me out . . ." His eyes darkened. "He was having a reaction to the presence of another Sentinel in the area, but we didn't know that at the time."

John blinked. "Another Sentinel?" He'd had the impression it was like a superpower or something, completely unique.

"Yeah. There used to be lots of Sentinels in pre-industrial societies, but they've become less common. This was the first time we met one. Anyway, Jim got all territorial and he wasn't sure why, so he ended up throwing _me_ right out of his territory."

"What happened?"

Blair grimaced. "Well, it's a long story, but . . . I died."

"What, just from being separated?"

"No!" Blair laughed. "No, it's not like that -- we're not _tied_ to each other or anything. Although, I'm not really sure how well Jim could cope long-term without me around. But that time, it was the other Sentinel. She killed me. Jim got there just too late to stop her. He had some training as a medic in the Army, and he brought me back even when the EMTs were ready to give up. He just wouldn't let me go."

John thought about that for a while. "I don't think anything like that's going to happen to Rodney and me. Not as a result of being apart, I mean."

"You never know, man. It's a dangerous galaxy out there, even if you're not a Sentinel."

"I just think Rodney might be better off without me, no matter how bad it feels just now." And John . . . might not exactly be _better off_ without Rodney, but he'd feel safer not having another person to worry about all the time.

* * *

After breakfast, John sought out Sergeant Bates and argued with him until the quartermaster grudgingly coughed up a set of sheets. He went back to the larger room (now just Rodney's room) and collected his meager set of belongings while Rodney was in the lab. And that was that; he was a single man again.

Being Rodney's ex-lover was surprisingly similar to being Rodney's lover in a lot of ways. John still spent a lot of time working on the Gateships with Grodin or Simpson, or with other scientists on other Ancient equipment, or ferrying people and equipment back and forth to the mainland. He still spent a lot of effort trying to keep track of where Rodney was, but now it was mostly so he could avoid him. That wasn't too hard, since Rodney was apparently working on the equipment they'd salvaged from the Daedalus, and John's ATA gene was no advantage with Earth/Asgard technology.

He didn't spend mealtimes with Rodney anymore, but he kept trying to figure out where and what Rodney was eating. When he discovered that Rodney was skipping meals, he spent a lot of energy trying to get food to Rodney through middlemen. Blair Sandburg was good for this a few times, but too often John couldn't find Blair or couldn't draw him away from whatever he and Ellison were busy with. John tried Hailey then (moving slowly, but mostly recovered from her adventure on the Daedalus), and that worked since she was rabidly curious about progress on the Asgard beaming console and used the food delivery as an excuse to get into the lab. But apparently Rodney said something rude to her (the phrase 'errand-girl spy' was mentioned), and after that she was less receptive.

John tried Cadman next, but she just raised a strawberry-blond eyebrow. "Didn't you break up with McKay?" she demanded.

"Yes, well . . . sort of." Accidentally, John didn't add.

"So why are you still taking care of him?"

"Somebody needs to," John retorted.

"He's a big boy, he can take care of himself. He's just skipping meals to get you to notice, to prove you still care."

It was possible; Rodney wasn't beyond underhanded emotional manipulation, when it occurred to him. But as angry as he'd been, he probably wouldn't believe John _did_ still care about him anyway. It was really more likely that he was just throwing himself into work and forgetting about meals completely. Or so determined to avoid John that he wouldn't come to the mess, so the only food he got was junk and powerbars.

"He doesn't know I'm the one sending the food," John pointed out.

"Yeah, right."

"No, seriously. He wouldn't believe you even if you told him."

"Look, flyboy. Come to me if you're ready for a rebound," Cadman drawled. "No strings attached. But don't try to drag me into this co-dependent thing you have going on. I don't need that."

John's face was hot and he felt guilty for even considering the proposition -- he'd been in high school when she was born, for God's sake! -- and anyway he didn't need more complications in his life, even if she was sort of cute. He just shook his head at her.

Cadman gave an exasperated sigh. "Try Dr. Kusanagi," she said with a nod towards a diminutive Japanese woman. "She admires McKay for some reason, and she likes to take care of people. But go easy on her; she's still a little scared of men."

Ah, yes, a member of Heightmeyer's special therapy group. John carried the tray of Rodney-food over to Kusanagi's table and made sure to sit a careful distance away rather than looming over her while he made his request. And that was another meal delivered to the labs.

But if the days were only slightly changed, the nights were very different now. The bed was too small (even for John alone; how had they ever fit in it together?), and too hard, and too cold. He didn't sit awake waiting for Rodney to get back from the labs, or give up and go to sleep anyway only to be awakened by mutterings and putterings and blanket-rearrangings, then sleep too late every morning. Now he lay awake because he was half-afraid to relax into sleep, and he woke shouting from nightmares he barely remembered, and he got up most days before dawn.

* * *

Sixteen days after the salvage mission, nine days after the day-long memorial service for the Daedalus personnel, and four days after his stitches were removed, John reported to Ellison's office for the team's regular weekly briefing. He was a little nervous about being in a small room with Rodney, and it only got worse when he found out Ellison wasn't there at all; it was just Blair perched on the edge of Ellison's desk, and Rodney sitting in one of the chairs with his laptop held out like a shield.

"I told Jim I would have a talk with you guys before the briefing," Blair said frankly.

John pulled the other chair closer to him -- and incidentally further away from Rodney -- before sitting. Even without looking at Rodney, he knew the physicist was uncomfortable.

"Talk about what? What do we need to talk about?" said Rodney, too quickly.

"Well, you know, Jim and I just want to be sure you two can still work together."

John shrugged. "Sure."

"Of course we can!" Rodney blustered.

"Yeah, see, that would be a little more convincing if either of you had looked at the other since walking into the room."

John glanced over and caught Rodney's startled gaze, then looked away quickly. "We're both grownups," he said at the same moment Rodney declared, "We're professionals!"

John nodded. "What he said."

"Uh . . . huh." Blair rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "And you've cleared up your little misunderstanding?"

John winced.

"Of course we -- wait, what misunderstanding?" Rodney demanded.

"John?" Blair prompted.

John sighed. "Blair thinks it's a big deal that you thought I was cheating on you. I tried to tell him that's not . . ."

"It is a big deal! I mean, okay, so we never discussed this in detail, but I was definitely under the impression that we were going to be exclusive." Rodney gave a strained chuckle that made John's guts ache. "Stupid of me, huh? You'd think I would learn, after all these years. It's not like I haven't had it demonstrated before . . ."

The pain in his voice was too much for John. "Rodney, I wasn't -- we _were_ exclusive. You were right."

Rodney blinked. "So then who's this Rick guy? Because I checked, and there aren't any Marines or airmen who go by Rick. A couple of the scientists, but one of them's straight and the other? I just can't see you with a sociologist --"

"Rodney. It was back on Earth."

"Oh." Rodney considered that. "You said something about that, but --"

"It was years ago. And he's dead, anyway."

"But you -- why were you calling me by his name if it was years ago?"

"Because I just had a --" John bit his lip. "Dream. About him."

"Oh. _Oh!_ One of those nightmare things? I wondered what those were. I figured it was PTSD or something. Well, I guess it still is, only it's from, what, seeing your lover die or something?"

"I'd really rather not talk about it, Rodney," John said through gritted teeth. He stared at the edge of Ellison's desk, not wanting to know what would be in Blair's eyes if he glanced up. Looking at Rodney was completely out of the question.

"Well, you should talk to someone! It might help you deal with this a little better."

John glared in the general direction of Rodney's knees. "Somehow I missed the part where you have a psychology degree."

Blair cleared his throat. "As a matter of fact, I _do_ have a--"

Rodney ignored him. "I don't need a degree to see how messed up you are, Sheppard."

"Fine! If I'm so messed up, maybe it's a good thing you're not going out with me anymore, _McKay_." John was holding on to his temper, but only barely.

Rodney looked like he was about to retort, then paused. "Hold on, is that what this is about? You're trying to protect me from you, or something? I thought you were protecting yourself."

John rolled his eyes. "Whatever." He turned to Blair. "Misunderstanding all cleared up, and we haven't tried to murder each other yet. So can we hear about this mission?"

"Mission, what mission?" said Rodney. "I thought we were starting on the southeast pier next. Oh, wait --" He snapped his fingers in realization. "We're going back to that island to pick up Gateship Two, aren't we? I knew Grodin would admit he needed me on those repairs!"

Ellison was in the room suddenly; John hadn't even heard him coming. "We're going to the mainland," he said shortly. "Salvage operation."

Blair scooted aside to make room for his husband on the desk, but Ellison just stood in front of it, hands loosely clasped behind his back in a posture John recognized from every commanding officer he'd ever had.

"Salvage?" said Rodney. "On the _mainland_?"

Blair leaned forward. "Remember when we were on our way back to the planet, and Jim saw something that wasn't supposed to be there?"

"A scar," John recalled.

"I think it was from a crash landing," said Ellison.

"A crashed _what_?" John asked.

Blair shrugged. "Well, this scar wasn't there a couple of years ago, when we surveyed the mainland."

John considered what he knew of the expedition's history. "You think it happened during the siege?"

"They think it's a Wraith dart," Rodney snapped, looking nervous.

"Maybe," Ellison amended. "Also possible it could have been one of the 302s from the Daedalus -- they weren't all accounted for. But more likely a dart, since there were more of them around, and the 302s supposedly never entered the atmosphere."

"Whichever it was, if it was supposed to be heading for a ship in orbit and ended up on the mainland, it must have completely messed-up controls or propulsion." Rodney looked around at the rest of them expectantly. "Which _means_ it probably crashed at very high velocity and there's nothing to salvage."

"We discussed it with O'Neill and Grodin," said Blair. "They think it's possible the dart was half-functional but couldn't quite achieve orbit."

Rodney frowned. "Well . . . possible, yes. And heading west against the planet's rotation wouldn't exactly help it reach escape velocity."

"Or maybe their sensors were down and they just couldn't find their ship."

"The point is, this is a scar and not a crater," said Ellison. "It came in at an oblique angle. Not a meteor, and not some ballistic piece of wreckage."

"You can't possibly think anyone -- or anything -- survived," Rodney protested.

Ellison shrugged. "Even if the pilot died, the people that got beamed up might still be recoverable."

"I've seen that," John said. "McKay -- the other McKay, in the other universe -- pulled this slimy thing out of a dart and brought it back to Atlantis, and they rematerialized his teammates out of it."

Blair nodded. "We've never done the rematerialization here, but that's a chance we can't pass up on. And also . . ." He looked a little sheepish. "Teyla's had some dreams. Not lately, but she said they lasted a while after the siege was over."

Ellison sighed. "Chief, I thought we agreed not to mention that. It could have just been regular dreams about the siege, end of story."

John blinked. "Dreams?"

"Teyla has a sort of telepathic ability to sense Wraith," Blair explained. "Especially hive ships, but one time she sensed a single Wraith that had infiltrated the city. It affected her dreams."

"And she also dreamed about this crashed ship?" Rodney demanded.

Blair grimaced. "Maybe. It isn't really clear. The dreams mostly stopped after a month or so."

"So you think the Wraith pilot lived a month after crashing and then died?" John said.

"Or Teyla was just dreaming. But the point is, we should check this thing out, and then we'll know instead of just guessing." Ellison looked at John and Rodney. "Beckett cleared both of you for missions, but if you're not feeling up to it we can go with another team."

John shook his head. He knew how Ellison felt about keeping the team together, and he generally agreed with that philosophy. Besides, he was itching to fly again. "We're good to go." He looked at Rodney.

Rodney was frowning. "How much danger do you think this will involve?"

"Rodney!" John protested, but Rodney just lifted his chin and kept looking at Ellison.

The captain shrugged. "Danger? Not much, probably. There might be some hiking. I heard you're up to speed on what little we know about Wraith technology, but Grodin could take this one instead."

Mention of his rival tightened Rodney's jaw, which may have been what Ellison intended. "No no, I can do it. Hiking is, is good. When do we leave?"

"Departure just before noon tomorrow should put us at the site around dawn local time," said Ellison. "That will give us the whole day to put the pieces together."

* * *

Ellison showed John the area he was talking about on survey records taken when the expedition had first explored the planet. It was north of the equator -- so early winter there -- in a desert region on the northern section of the main continent. Unfortunately, the weather satellite they had set up after a big hurricane that first year barely extended to the north part of the mainland, so they had only a rough idea of what the weather would be like. But from his exerience in Afghanistan John figured desert plus winter meant cold and dry. He hoped Rodney would dress warmly enough, but decided it wasn't his business to say anything. He planned to pack extra water, though.

The flight took a couple of hours, skimming through the upper atmosphere. Ellison rode shotgun, which made sense since he knew where they were going. Never mind that his guidance would only be needed at the very end; no one suggested that Rodney should take his usual seat.

When they got to the right area, it was overcast with high clouds, windy, but as dry as expected. The terrain was something more like scrubland or prairie rather than a pure desert with dunes; John was relieved to find that it didn't really remind him that much of Afghanistan. Isolated mountain ranges served as landmarks for what Ellison had seen; John was getting close to what he thought was the right area when Ellison said, "Over there" and pointed him further west -- by nearly a hundred miles, it turned out.

The grayish-brown earth and scrubby plants had been torn up over a track about half a mile long, revealing a paler yellow soil below. John was at once impressed with how long the track was (he couldn't see anyone walking away from a crash that left that big a mark) and how short, for Ellison to have seen it from space. Whatever had crashed had ended up in small enough pieces that they couldn't immediately tell what it was. Ellison didn't want John to fly too low over the wreckage in case the thrust from the drive pods blew sand over some of the evidence. Looking at the way the sharp-bladed desert grasses bowed and fluttered, John didn't think their drive pods would do anything that a year and a half of weather hadn't alredy; but he complied and landed a few hundred yards away from the messier end of the crash track.

Clipping his P90 to his vest, John cast a quick glance at Rodney to make sure his gear was all set. Rodney and Blair were both carrying P90s as well, at Ellison's assistance; if this was really a Wraith, they might need rapid, heavy, and lethal firepower. Rodney seemed uncomfortable with the weapon, but checked it over competently and looked ready to go.

Outside, at ground level, it did seem more of a desert. There were patches of bare ground in between tufts of grass and low, thorny bushes that carried no leaves at this season. Everything was a dull gray color, blending in with the sand that skittered across the ground. Some of the wiry plants inhabited a fine line between bush and cactus; Blair commented on them with interest, but John wasn't really interested in the botanical classifications.

Rodney was ready to go straight to the largest piece of remaining wreckage, but he agreed reluctatly to wait while Ellison paced around the area first with Blair two steps behind. Finally the captain summoned the rest of them with a nod. "Definitel a Wraith dart," he said shortly, jerking his chin at the debris. "But the pilot's not here now."

John took in that ominous comment and kept his weapon ready regardless. As they got closer to the big chunk of wreckage, John saw that it was the pilot compartment, stripped of almost everything that had been attached to it. It had either been good engineering, good luck (for the Wraith), or really incredible flying that ensured all the rest of the ship absorbed the energy from the crash.

"No radio or subspace signals at any frequency," Rodney said with an eye on his scanner, confirming what they already knew.

The pilot compartment was upright and had lots of footprints around it, or at least foot-sized depressions in the sand which had filled over time with a finer, darker silt than the surrounding coarse dirt. John could tell they were pretty old, but he wasn't a good enough tracker to judge if the Wraith had been injured or not; he figured just the fact of footprints was bad enough. He glanced at Ellison, but the captain was squinting away at something else.

Rodney leaned over the edge of the open compartment.

"Don't touch anything," John said sharply.

Rodney glared at him.

"They have a self-destruct," John explained. "I don't know if it's still intact, but it makes a nasty explosion."

Rodney blinked and looked more closely at the dust-streaked compartment. "There," he said, pointing to the console. "That must be where the self-destruct mechanism was. It's been disabled. In fact, a lot of this was disabled." He squinted. "Not wrecked -- ripped apart deliberately."

Blair pointed at some tracks on the ground nearby. "He was trying to get something working. Maybe the radio?"

Rodney turned and studied the fragments at Blair's feet. "Subspace transmitter, right. But it doesn't look like he had enough parts to fix it."

"I found the culling device," John said. He had circled behind the compartment and discovered the cage-shaped unit, naked, with sinewy Wraith wires hooking it into the remaining section of the ship.

Rodney came by and squatted over it. "He was trying to get power into the device. But I don't see why . . ."

"He needed food," said Ellison in clipped tones from the other side of the wreck. "And he got it. Over here."

A short distance beyond the pilot compartment were a couple of shriveled bodies dressed in expedition uniforms. And a few feet beyond that, another . . . and another . . . John grimaced, and Rodney made a distressed noise.

"The culling beam leaves the victims unconscious," Blair said softly. "Oh, man. He could have materialized them all at once and just gone from one to the other . . ."

"At least they wouldn't feel it," John said quickly, "if they were unconscious."

"Doesn't look like they tried to run, anyhow," said Ellison. He knelt by one of them to pull up the dogtags and closed his eyes briefly at what he found, then stood and dusted his hands. "Sheppard. Help me bring the body bags from the Gateship. McKay, try to figure out what resources that Wraith took away from the wreck."

"What? How am I supposed to --"

"Did he take the explosives from the self-destruct?" Ellison pressed.

Rodney looked down as if he expected to find the explosives lying at his feet. "Well, I suppose I can --"

"That's the sort of thing I need to know. Blair, help McKay." His significant look said that Blair should keep an eye on Rodney, keep him from blowing himself up or destroying evidence. John, who had an idea how tricky that could be, shrugged in sympathy.

By the time they had gotten the bodies stowed in the Gateship -- and John was thinking he was tired of "salvage" operations -- Rodney had some answers for them.

"Well, he didn't take the explosives." Rodney pointed at a gooey scorched residue at the rear of the compartment. "As far as I can tell, he set up a slow burn to provide the power for rematerializing people from the culling device, since the engine is a total loss."

"Okay, that cuts down on possible booby-traps," Ellison said.

"I can't really tell what weapons he might have," Rodney went on. "There are some empty storage bins, but I don't know what was in them, if anything."

"Where?" said Ellison, and studied the storage areas. "Maybe a handheld stunner, some knives. Nothing big, anyway."

"Hmm. But he might have a radio with him. I'm not positive, but I think that's what was removed from here." Rodney pointed at a niche on the far side of the compartment. "Possibly he cannibalized the short-range radio while he was trying to fix the subspace transmitter, but without an intact dart to compare against I just can't be sure what parts are missing."

"But you said there haven't been any radio transmissions," Blair put in.

"Not since we've been listening, no. But maybe he has a receiver and not a transmitter."

"Or maybe he just hasn't been transmitting," John suggested. "Saving power?"

"Yes, yes, also possible. My point is --" He looked at Ellison. "Our radio transmissions might be overheard."

Ellison frowned. "Can you scramble them?"

Rodney considered. "Well . . . yes, but it would take me an hour or so working with each radio. And the ones I've worked on won't talk to the others, and vice versa. It might cut the range of the transmissions, too. Oh, and he'll still be able to tell there's someone transmitting nearby, he just won't know what we're saying."

Ellison scratched his head. "Well, see what you can do with Sheppard's radio and Blair's. We'll keep the other two radios unaltered. And no communications with Atlantis until you get the scramble set up. If we can stay together, we'll avoid using the radios at all."

"There's more," Blair offered, glancing uncertainly at Rodney.

"More?" said Ellison.

Rodney grimaced. "I can't tell for sure. You understand that, right? I mean, I wouldn't want to get your hopes up --"

"Spit it out, McKay."

"There might still be some waveforms in the culling device."

Ellison just stared.

"People. He means people," Blair supplied.

"I'm not certain, because the power is gone. But see, that's my point. There was just enough power to rematerialize four people, and four people were, um . . . right. But there might have been more people stored in the device and just not enough energy to rematerialize them. Of course, it's also possible -- even likely -- that the waveforms have deteriorated over time, so they might not be recoverable. But . . ."

"So you're saying we should take that thing back to Atlantis with us?" said Ellison.

"That's right. It's sort of a slim hope, but, uh . . ."

"Better than no hope at all," said Blair.

"Right." Ellison looked down at the weird skeletal device. "Does it need power while we're traveling?"

"No. Or, if it does need power, it's already too late. A few more hours won't make a difference."

"Right. Disconnect it and stow it in the Gateship while I check out the tracks one more time."

Eliison did a long walk around the perimeter while Rodney removed the ligaments connecting the culling device to the pilot's compartment. John started to point out what the other Rodney in the alternate universe had done, but this Rodney just snapped at him impatiently so he stepped back. Seeing the direction Ellison was looking, he wasn't surprised when the captain came back and said the Wraith had gone east.

"Those mountains to the northeast are the nearest likely source of water, and that's where the tracks are heading."

"Do Wraith need water?" said John doubtfully.

Blair nodded. "We had a couple of captives that first year. They don't eat -- well, not food, anyway -- but they need to drink. Not as much as we drink, and they can go a few days without, but it's a pretty basic need."

"Okay. How do you want to do this?" John asked Ellison. "Those mountains are fifty miles away or more, and the tracks are over a year old. If we're tracking on foot, we're going to need more provisions than we brought." And a lot of time, he didn't say.

But Ellison shook his head. "I can follow the tracks if you fly low and slow, at least here over the desert. Once we see what the vegetation is like in those mountains, we might have to change our plans."

That was pretty much how it turned out. John flew a leisurely path toward the mountains, with Ellison adjusting his course a few degrees this way or that from time to time. In the foothills Ellison started having more trouble reading the rocky soil, and John had to hover a lot while he squinted. Twice Ellison got out covered a section on foot while John followed him in the Gateship, which was a little weird. Then they reached softer, moister soil and the tracking got easier again for a little while as the trail continued to climb. They followed a stream from the air for a few miles, and then Ellison lost the trail as the trees got taller.

"Set the gateship down near that last camp we saw," Ellison said at last. "It looks like he stayed there for a while. Maybe I can get an idea how long if we take a closer look."

"That's odd," said John as he settled the Gateship in the next clearing upstream from the camp.

"What's odd?" said Ellison, still gazing intently through the windscreen.

"These trees. They look like pine trees."

Ellison just looked at him. Blair said, "What's so odd about that?"

"I just mean, they look a lot like what we have back on Earth, but this is an alien planet. You'd think it would be more . . . alien."

Ellison's jaw flexed.

Rodney was the one who said what everyone was apparently thinking. "Hello, did you actually pay attention to any of those mission reports you read? Eighty to ninety percent of the worlds with Stargates have pine forests near the gate, and most of the rest have a pine forest _somewhere_ on the planet. It's only been commented on by every gate team in two galaxies."

John's face heated. "I've only been to two other planets besides this one," he pointed out. "One was a desert -- at least, near the Stargate it was -- and the other had an unbreathable atmosphere. Excuse me for being the new kid on the block!"

"Okay, enough squabbling," said Ellison. "Look alive; the tracks I saw seemed old, but I won't be sure until I get a closer look."

John took up his P90 again, falling naturally into the rearguard position as the left the Gateship. Ellison was first, the obvious scout; Blair stayed close behind in case Ellison needed guidance with his senses. And Rodney was in the middle, the most protected -- which was only sensible since he had the least combat training and was also most likely to be distracted by his equipment. He had a scanner out now but apparently wasn't finding anything interesting.

Neither was Ellison, it seemed, because he relaxed a little as they reached the camp. It looked pretty bare to John; he could see where a fire had been built, and a pile of collected deadwood nearby, but there wasn't much sign of fishing activity or bones lying around. No food, because the Wraith didn't get nourishment from food, he realized. And correspondingly, no latrine. He'd known that, but hadn't _known_ on a visceral level.

John watched from the edge of the clearing as Ellison checked out the fire pit briefly and then moved on to the tracks in the soft ground on the bank of the stream. "This place looks like it was abandoned a while ago," John said questioningly.

Ellison nodded. "At least six months. But before that, he went away and came back. There are signs here from two different periods."

John frowned. "What do you suppose that means?"

Ellison shrugged. "He went looking for a better place, didn't like what he found, and decided to come back here?"

"And then moved on again?" Rodney asked disbelievingly. "What for?"

Ellison shook his head. "I don't know."

"I have a bad feeling about this, man," said Blair in a low voice.

"You could be right, Chief. Look sharp." Ellison cocked his head and turned in a circle, weapon ready and mouth open. John didn't know if he was tasting the air somehow or if he could hear better with his jaw loose, or if it was just an unconscious habit. Then Ellison stiffened and crossed the clearing in three strides, with Blair on his heels.

"Jim? What did you find?"

Ellison crouched by a low bush, a cousin of the thorny ones down in the desert below. "Check this out, Chief." He was pointing at something that looked to John like a wisp of lichen, or maybe a heavy cobweb.

Blair hissed slowly through his teeth. "He cocooned himself?"

"Somewhere nearby. Came out of it, came back to this campsite, and then . . . left again."

"How come? I mean, why come out of the hibernation?"

"I don't know. Maybe an animal disturbed him? Or he thought he smelled food? Hell, maybe he had bad dreams about Teyla same as she did about him."

"Does it matter?" Rodney demanded, studying the fragment of webbing over their shoulders.

John had returned to watching their perimeter while everyone was distracted, but he listened with interest to the conversation.

"It matters if it affected what he did next," said Blair. "Because that's how we find him."

Ellison stood up. "From what we know, he had to be getting pretty hungry by a month or two after the crash. Even with four . . . meals under his belt, he couldn't go on indefinitely."

"So you think he holed up somewhere near here?"

"Obviously he did at least once. Came out of the cocoon for whatever reason . . . then maybe went back to it again?"

"Yeah, but where, man?"

"Nearby. Somewhere safe from predators." After a moment, Ellison looked up.

"The _trees_?" Rodney scoffed. "You think Wraith sleep in trees?"

"I don't know about that, Jim," said Blair, sounding doubtful. "It would be safe from most predators, but not windstorms. I mean, bears climb trees, but they don't hibernate in them."

"You could be right, Chief, but let's not rule out the possibility. We could be looking for a cave, or a hole, or a tree -- we'll have to keep our eyes peeled. Give me a minute, here."

Ellison wandered in widening circles around the abandoned camp, crouching often to check something on the ground, or lifting his head to sniff the wind. Finally he came back to the streamside. "No clear trail," he said. "At least, there's half a dozen trails and they're all old enough I can't tell which is the freshest. But the smart money says we go uphill."

"Remember when we were helping the geologists do those surveys?" Blair said, following his husband as they started to tromp through the trees. "And Dr. Alacki talked about the kind of formations where you could find caves?"

"Limestone," said Ellison shortly.

"Limestone worn by water, usually," Rodney added. "I could try to scan for the right minerals . . ." He fiddled with his device while they walked.

"Yeah! Water, like that stream?" said Blair, waving behind them. "Maybe we should be sticking close to it."

"That's nice, Chief, but our Wraith buddy wouldn't be looking for an extensive cave system -- just a good nook to hide out in. Something in the side of a cliff, maybe, with just one approach to it."

"I saw some cliffs before we landed," John said. "Off to the, uh . . ." He pointed uncertainly.

"Southeast." Ellison nodded. "That's where we're headed."

An hour later, they had gone about three miles on a meandering path that wound among trees and rocky outcrops. Rodney had suggested several times that it would be more efficient to go back and get the Gateship, with more elaborate references to his recently-healed ribs each time. Ellison didn't even seem to hear him, he was concentrating so hard on whatever clues he was finding in the ground or the air. Blair just gave an apologetic shrug.

"Hey Rodney, catch," John drawled, and tossed him one of the spare bottles of water he'd brought along. "Just think of it as exercise and fresh air. It's good for you."

Rodney walked backwards, gesturing with the water bottle. "If you're implying that I'm out of shape, I'll have you know --"

And that was when the Wraith dropped down from the rocks overhanging the path. With wild white hair and pale green skin, it was even more alarming than the one John had seen before. It landed between Rodney and Blair, so that the two of them blocked John's and Ellison's line of fire.

John had his P90 up and was yelling at Rodney -- he didn't even know what -- as the thing reached for him. Rodney was turning, too slowly, still in the way. There was the crack of a single shot from Blair or Jim, and the creature snarled, spinning to face the other way. It grabbed Blair's jacket with one hand and hurled him thirty feet or more down the hillside.

Rodney grabbed at the Wraith -- John yelled, "No, don't touch it, shoot it!" -- and was thrown aside himself. Now John had a clear shot, but Ellison was directly on the other side of the creature. Would the bullets go through? Why wasn't Ellison firing? John scrambled a few steps uphill, trying to get a crossfire angle, but his foot slipped. He fell and caught himself on his elbow, but now a tree was blocking his shot and he had to lever back to his knees, losing precious seconds.

Ellison was just standing, frozen, looking downhill where Blair had been thrown. His weapon was pointed at the ground; he didn't seem to care that the Wraith was right in front of him, didn't even react as it slammed a hand into his chest.

Then Rodney was there, in John's way _again_, grabbing the Wraith and hauling it off of Ellison. It spun and grabbed Rodney's wrist, then his throat. John was still yelling: "Rodney, no, get out of the way!" and Rodney was yelling back, "Shoot it, just shoot, just shoot!" and finally John noticed the flare of green where the Wraith was holding Rodney, realized what it meant, and clicked the P90 over to full automatic. It still felt wrong, wrong _wrong_ to aim it at his teammate (friend, lover) and pull the trigger, but he did it. Bullets sprayed around Rodney in brilliant flashes, and the Wraith jerked again and again until John's gun jammed and the fire stopped.

Silence. John's throat hurt from the yelling, and his heart was thrumming up between his collarbones. The Wraith didn't move.

"Is it dead?" Rodney stirred under the creature, pushed it aside and stood up, looking down at it. "I'm okay -- I think I'm okay. Is it dead?"

John lowered his gun. "It looks dead." Did Wraith have a pulse, and if so where should he feel for it? He approached carefully, then decided to play it safe, took out his handgun and put three more shots into the Wraith's skull. It didn't jerk; its muscles were completely lax.

"It's dead," said Rodney positively.

John let out a shaky sigh. "Jesus, Rodney, why didn't you tell me you had the shield?"

Rodney unzipped his jacket and plucked the glowing green brooch from his chest, looking at it. "I didn't want you to -- well, it's not very -- I mean, I didn't know if I would even need it."

"Ellison --" John turned and froze.

Ellison was still standing where the Wraith had left him, ripped shirt flapping in the breeze, staring downhill.

John followed his gaze: Blair lay crumpled at the base of a tree where the Wraith had thrown him.

"Oh, shit," John breathed. "Rodney, try to snap him out of it!" he barked with a wave at Ellison, and scrambled down the hill.

Blair was folded over himself, head down, and at a glance, the angle of his neck looked pretty bad. "I don't think he's breathing," John said, afraid to touch. "Ellison, can you hear a heartbeat? Jim!"

Ellison groaned oddly, but then he was sliding down the slope as well. "Yes. Yeah, I hear -- his heart's beating. But it's getting weaker."

"Shit. We need to breathe for him, but we can't at this angle. Can you tell if it's safe to move him?"

Ellison's hands ghosted around his husband's head, neck, spine. "Concussion. Dislocated shoulder. Broken neck."

"Oh no," Rodney murmured from behind them.

"Right here," Ellison said, his hand curled too high up on Blair's neck. "The vertebrae might just be dislocated, not crushed -- I don't feel any bone fragments."

John's heart was ratcheting up again. If they moved Blair, they'd make the damage from the broken neck worse. But if they didn't move him, he'd suffocate. "Okay, okay, uh . . . what do we have that we can use to brace his neck while we move him?" He looked to Rodney, who always had the most junk in his pack.

But Ellison was already moving, disconnecting the straps of Blair's pack and lifting him with one sure hand cupped at the back of his head. John winced to watch it, but he had to trust the man knew what he was doing. Blair had said Ellison was a medic in the Army, and maybe his senses let him know what was safe and what wasn't.

It seemed forever but was probably less than thirty seconds before Blair was lying flat. "We have to keep his head turned, like this," said Ellison. "Something will pull if we straighten it."

"Here, here." Rodney shoved something soft at Ellison -- a spare shirt, John thought -- and the sentinel tucked it under his husband's head to keep it steady at the right angle.

"He still isn't breathing," John pointed out. It couldn't be attributed to the crumpled position anymore; more likely, the damage to his spinal cord had paralyzed the muscles responsible for breathing.

"We'll breathe for him," said Ellison, and bent down to match his mouth to Blair's.

It was amazing to see the pink come back into Blair's greying lips and cheeks within a few breaths. It was obviously helping, but Blair still didn't start breathing on his own.

"We have to get him to the Gateship," John muttered. "No -- we have to get the Gateship here." He looked around quickly, but it only took a moment to remember the last decent landing site he'd seen. "I can bring her in about two hundred yards from here, is that good enough?" There was a backboard and neck braces on board, he remembered.

"Do it," said Rodney decisively. "I'll stay here and, uh --" He waved. "Help Ellison."

John nodded. It was pretty clear the captain wasn't paying attention to anything but his husband. "You might have to take over. Don't let him hyperventilate."

"I got it, I got it. Just -- just go. Hurry."

John ran. The first part was easy: past the dead Wraith, around the outcropping, down this rocky slope . . . all too soon, he was among the thicker trees, and that was when he remembered his sense of direction wasn't so good on the ground. They'd been following a trail only Ellison could see, which made it hard to retrace.

John's gift for getting lost anywhere except in the air had been a joke during training, a source of ribbing among his buddies . . . and then Rick Holland had gotten killed because of it, and it wasn't so funny anymore. And now Blair was probably going to die for the same fucking reason. John cursed himself, paused and turned in a circle, then ran for a deadfall that looked halfway familiar.

He kept going downhill, since he remembered that much -- but had it been this steep on the way up? At least going downhill he could maintain a pretty good pace; he was thinking now that he should have pushed himself harder on those dawn runs. Then he tripped and rolled and came back up on an aching ankle and figured a sane pace was probably smarter than an extreme one.

He was wishing desperately that the Gateship had some kind of remote control, that he could make it chirp like a car in a parking lot so he'd know which way to go, when he broke out onto a bluff overlooking a stream. He thought it was probably the same stream they had landed near -- it was about the right size, anyway -- but should he go upstream or down? He turned a couple more circles, trying to reach for the Gateship in his mind, then ran downstream more or less at random. Ten minutes later -- which was ten minutes Blair couldn't afford -- he found the clearing with the Gateship in it.

Fortunately, finding his teammates was not a problem. Rodney was carrying an Ancient scanner; John just had to ask the Gateship to look for it, and then he had no worries about getting turned around. He slotted the ship in where the slope was shallowest and started rummaging through the first aid supplies in the back.

When John reached the site, Rodney had taken over the rescue breathing. Ellison looked bleak but immediately took the kit from John, got Rodney using a bag with supplemental oxygen, and directed John to help him with the backboarding. They had Blair secured and on the way to the Gateship within minutes.

John pushed the little ship to its limits as he popped up above the atmosphere and then back down for landing on Atlantis barely more than half an hour later. They were within the 'Golden Hour' that had been drummed into his head for evac, but it still seemed like a damn long flight, with Ellison patiently squeezing every breath into Blair from a bag while he talked to Beckett over the radio, his voice tight and emotionless.

And then they got to sit in uncomfortable chairs in the infirmary for hours on end. Rodney jiggled his leg. John looked at the floor, not at Rodney's face with the lines springing out so it seemed suddenly older. Ellison paced at first, then sat next to them and stared at the wall as if his vision could bore right through it -- which, for all John knew, it could.

It was starting to sink in, that nasty feeling: _This is going to hurt. This is going to be really, really painful._ Last time had been bad because he was half in love with Rick Holland, and worse because he'd gone in to save Rick and ended up leading him straight to the enemy instead. This time John hadn't messed up significantly, had killed the Wraith and found the Gateship, and he wasn't even in love with Blair, but he still liked the guy and he could see what was coming. It was going to be long, and it was going to be painful, and it was going to be hard to keep Ellison from imploding completely. John remembered what Blair had said about the time he nearly died, and Ellison wouldn't give up until he was revived. And how the sentinel probably wouldn't do so well in the long term if Blair wasn't around to help him.

And through it all, his mind kept throwing up images at him: the Wraith throwing Blair down into the trees and Rodney up into the rocks. If it hadn't been for the shield, if it had gone down just a little differently, that could be Rodney in there with three doctors scratching their heads over him. And breakup or not, tens years together or three months, John would be feeling about as shitty as Ellison looked right now.

Actually, Ellison looked . . . sort of vacant. He had his mouth open again, which at least meant he wasn't grinding his teeth together, and he was staring off into space with a faint frown between his eyebrows. He was probably listening, John figured. It was one of those zone-outs Blair had told them about, where Ellison concentrated so hard on one sense he forgot everything else. They weren't harmful in themselves, Blair had said; it wasn't like Ellison would forget to breathe or anything, but he could get a nasty headache if he stayed under too long, and he wouldn't notice approaching danger, like when he had ignored the Wraith about to feed on him.

John swore, remembering, and got up to stand in front of Ellison. The man didn't react as John bent down and parted the tear in his shirt.

There was no mark underneath from the Wraith's hand.

"I don't get it," said John. "Didn't they tell us there should be a mark?"

Rodney frowned. "Maybe the Wraith didn't have him long enough?"

"It was only a few seconds, but it definitely had a hand planted on his chest. Look what it did to his shirt. But no feeding mark?"

"Let me see," said an accented voice behind him, and Dr. Beckett was leaning in to look at Ellison's chest.

"What's the word, Doc?" Ellison rasped, hoarse but evidently back in the real world.

"You'd a run-in with a Wraith?" Beckett straightened the torn flap of shirt to reveal a neatly excised oval from the Wraith's hand-mouth.

Ellison pushed him away and stood. "I'm fine."

"Aye, but the question is, why?"

"No, the question is, how's Blair doing?"

Beckett stepped back and bit his lip, choosing words carefully. "We've got him stabilized, for the moment. He's got a concussion, and there was a bit of swelling in his brain, but we got that under control soon enough --"

"I know the injuries," Ellison snapped. "What's the prognosis?"

Beckett swallowed. "His spinal cord was almost completely severed between the second and third cervical vertebrae. We've repaired what we can, but . . . there will be some loss of nerve function, both sensory and motor. We won't know exactly how bad it is for a few weeks, after the swelling goes down --"

"That high in the spine, that's really bad, isn't it?" said Rodney. "I mean, upper body paralysis, not just lower?"

Beckett rubbed his own neck and grimaced. "Aye, some of that, to be sure. We'll do what we can, of course, but it's not likely he'll have use of his hands."

"Will he even be able to breathe on his own?" John asked.

"Not at first. Perhaps later on, with therapy . . . or perhaps never."

"Shit," John murmured.

Ellison just stood still, staring over Beckett's shoulder.

"Now look, this doesn't have to mean the end of everything," Beckett said firmly. "Blair will be needing your support. This injury, it's similar to what happened to that actor fellow, Christopher Reeve? And you know he's led a full life even so --"

"He's dead," John said shortly.

"What's that?" said Beckett.

"He died a few years back," Rodney filled in. "Not too long after the Atlantis expedition left Earth. I remember since I was having, erm, some neural problems of my own at the time." His hands moved together nervously, checking each other's motions and sensations.

John glanced at Ellison, still motionless, and tried to think what would move the man. "When can we see Blair? Is he awake?"

"We've got him sedated, but sometimes people can hear and remember things that occur while they're --"

Ellison turned around and marched out of the infirmary without a word.

John blinked. This was even worse than he'd expected. He glanced at Rodney. "You think I should, uh . . . ?"

"Yeah, yeah, you go with him," said Rodney quickly. "I'll stay with, uh, with Blair."

John barely caught up before Ellison made it to the nearest transporter. He wasn't sure what to expect: a high balcony, the edge of a pier, the gym where they'd rigged up a sandbag for punching. But instead, Ellison charged down the corridor to his office. He lifted a metal box down from a high shelf and dialed a combination into the padlock, pulling something out and holding it thoughtfully for a minute.

John watched in puzzlement; what was the point of grabbing up some fancy jewelry -- was that a necklace or a bracelet -- now, of all times? It was a clunky thing, with big jewels that had to be fake, and John couldn't imagine either Blair or Jim wearing it. "Listen, uh . . ." he began, but he was really bad at this sort of thing. The talking thing. "You know you'll have the support of everyone here, right? And, uh . . ."

It probably didn't matter how bad John was at this, since Ellison didn't appear to be listening. His hand spasmed around the necklace thing, and he charged right back out through the door, pushing past John as if he weren't standing there struggling for words. Once more John was scrambling to follow, and completely clueless about what was going through his team leader's head.

Ellison led the way straight back to the infirmary, where Rodney was still talking to Beckett.

Rodney took one look at the jewelry held out in Ellison's hands and went pale. "Where the hell did that come from?"

"It was in with some of your science equipment when the expedition first shipped out."

John frowned. Rodney had been supposed to go with the first wave of the expedition, but he'd been pulled out at the last minute.

"No, no, no," Rodney was saying, with hands held up to fend the jewelry off -- hands that were actually _trembling_. "I have no idea how to use that thing."

"You were implanted," Ellison insisted. "You have naqadah in your blood."

"It was only for a couple of days!"

"That's almost as long as Carter had, and she can use one of these."

"Yeah, but, but that was a Tok'Ra actively trying to share information with her! Dyb-- my -- the one that -- he was trying to keep things from me."

"But he must have known how to use this, or he wouldn't have packed it!"

John had to step in. "Now, wait a second. Is that some kind of, of Ancient device or something?" he asked with a wave at the jewelry. Maybe he could operate the thing and save Rodney whatever unpleasantness he was expecting.

"Not Ancient," Ellison snapped. "Goa'uld."

Rodney had been pulled off the expedition because he'd gotten infected with an alien parasite that took over his brain. And apparently while it was in control, it had sent this device along to Atlantis.

"The device can be used for healing . . . " Beckett filled in uneasily. "But only someone with naqadah in their blood can use it. A Goa'uld host, or former host."

"A former host with knowledge of how it works! Seriously, I hardly remember anything from those few days!" Rodney pleaded. "I can't . . . I really can't do this."

John winced, knowing how much it pained Rodney even to think about having that alien in control of his mind and body. But healing? That sounded pretty cool, and useful.

"McKay . . . Rodney," said Ellison in a low urgent tone. "This could be Blair's only chance." He held Rodney's gaze for several long seconds. "Please."

It was obvious that wasn't a word Ellison used often. Rodney picked up on that as well, because his face crumpled. "I don't know what I'm doing! What if I make it worse? I could kill him with that thing!"

Ellison took a deep breath. "We'll take that chance. I know Blair would want it. Just . . . give it a try."

Rodney turned to Beckett in appeal, but the doctor just shrugged. "It may be the best option we have right now."

His brow creased unhappily, Rodney took the cluster of jewelry from Ellison and slipped his left hand into it. It draped like a sort of fingerless glove, with the biggest, fakest-looking jewel in the center of his palm. Beckett led them back into a room where Blair lay face-down with his back, shoulders, neck, and head all braced by various equipment. With all that and a breathing tube taped in place, it seemed half of Blair's head was obscured in plastic.

Beckett pointed to a computer display. "This is the most recent scan of his neck. You can see the damage in this region, here."

John could make a couple of vertebrae that weren't quite in line, and various other things highlighted in red that he supposed were not how they were supposed to be, but he wasn't completely sure what he was looking at. Rodney just looked over the scan with his shoulders drooping.

"Now, Colonel Carter hasn't been able to tell us much about how these devices work, but what she described sounds a bit akin to what we feel when we work with Ancient devices. Just . . . reach out with your mind and try to connect to the thing."

Swallowing hard, Rodney held his left hand out over Blair's body and squeezed his eyes shut.

Nothing happened.

John shifted and glanced at Ellison, who was watching intently.

"Try to relax, Rodney," Beckett coaxed. "Just let it flow . . ."

Rodney gasped and stiffened, and the big jewel on his palm began to glow. He moved the hand to hover more closely above Blair's neck, the jewel lighting the skin warmly.

A piece of equipment started to beep, and Beckett peered at it, then silenced the alarm. He tapped quickly on a computer, and a green grid of light began to play over Blair's body. "Aye, that's it, you're doing the right thing. Keep it up."

Rodney's breath was coming in great heaves now. John stepped up behind him, wanting to help but not sure how. He rested a cautious hand on Rodney's shoulder, then ended up grabbing him under the arms and supporting half his weight as Rodney rocked back against him.

"That's it!" Beckett was saying. "Looks like you've repaired most of --"

"Concussion," Rodney choked out between pants.

"Eh? Oh, y'mean Blair's head injury. It's here, on the left occipital lobe."

Rodney moved his hand up to the area Beckett indicated, held it there for a few seconds while the light pulsed, then started to reach down to the braced shoulder. Suddenly the light went out of the jewel and Rodney sagged in John's arms.

"Doc," said John anxiously, easing Rodney down to the floor.

Beckett was already there with a penlight to shine in Rodney's eyes. He took a pulse from Rodney's wrist, grimaced, and jerked his head to indicate John should help get him up on one of the beds in the other room.

"He'll be fine in a few minutes," said Beckett, disentangling the alien device from Rodney's hand. "Going to have a nasty headache, though, and I'd like his blood pressure to come down before I let him out of here."

"How about Blair?" Ellison asked, hovering between the two beds.

"From what I saw, the repair work looked good, but let me do an in-depth scan to be sure. I need to extubate him, as well."

John stayed with Rodney, rubbing a soothing hand over his shoulders as he curled on the bed. A nurse came by with a painkiller and a muscle relaxant and put a blood pressure cuff on his arm. John took one look at the numbers and winced; if even he could tell they were bad, Rodney was in trouble. But the next reading a few minutes later was already coming down.

Beckett headed back their way with Ellison. "With the sedatives wearing off, he should be conscious in an hour or two, and then we'll know for sure -- but I think we'll find his neuro function is good. I want to keep him overnight for observation, and he should wear a sling for a week or so, but it seems Rodney did a bang-up job on his neck and head."

Ellison nodded briefly and stopped next to Rodney's bed, looking down at him. "McKay."

Rodney squinted up, aware enough but apparently not wanting to speak.

Ellison swallowed, his jaw muscles jumping. "We owe you. Anything you want -- anything. You just ask." With one more, stiff nod, he headed back to Blair's bedside.

John gave Rodney's shoulder a squeeze. He would have liked to hold his hand, but that might seem too personal. "He's right," he murmured. "I'm really --" _Proud,_ he wanted to say, but that wouldn't sound right. "Really impressed with what you did. Hey listen, I hear there's a Jell-O-like substance in the mess today. Want me to bring you some?"

Rodney just closed his eyes and turned his face into the pillow. Maybe he didn't want John's attentions.

"Okay," John whispered. "I'll stop bugging you, then. Hang in there, Rodney."

"Blue," said Rodney weakly.

"Huh?"

"See if they have any blue Jell-O. Red's okay too, but blue is my favorite. And some dinner to go with it -- I'm hungry. Maybe a sandwich, or a muffin?"

John grinned. "You got it, buddy!"

* * *

That night, John stood in the corridor outside Rodney's room, undecided if he should knock or just go in or maybe just go away. He'd actually been standing there for a couple of minutes already, but he wasn't getting much closer to a decision. A couple of times he'd turned away and turned back.

The door slid open, and Rodney stood there looking cranky in a worn T-shirt and boxers. "Will you come in already? You're driving me nuts, pacing around out there."

"I wasn't pacing," John objected, but he went in anyway. "How did you know I was there?"

"Because I heard you pacing," Rodney grumbled. He was squinting as if his head still hurt, though it had been hours since Beckett released him.

John shuffled his feet. "I, ah, was wondering if you needed anything," he said. "For your headache, maybe? I could run down to the infirmary for you."

Rodney waved irritably at his desk, and John blinked to see it piled with stuff. One of the lumpy pot-fruits was there, and a dish with some traces of blue jello in it, and a plate of --

"Are those brownies?" John asked in amazement.

"Made with the coffee-carob stuff, yes. Though I could wish it had more of the caffeine characteristics of coffee, in addition to the taste."

On the corner of the desk was a little cup with some pain pills in it. There were also some more exotic items: a Gameboy with several cartridges, a small embroidered pillow, a hat that appeared hand-knitted from some local yarn, a bottle that John suspected held a potent hooch, and another bottle behind that.

"This can't be real," he murmured, picking up the Coca-Cola bottle -- glass, with the cap still firmly stuck in place.

"It is. Bottled in Canada, so it has real sugar instead of that poisonous corn stuff Americans drink. Sergeant, um, whatsisname gave it to me." Rodney plucked it from John's grasp and put it back on the table.

"Why? Not the Coke, I mean -- why all of it?"

Rodney waved in a throwing-away gesture. "I think people asked Ellison what they could do for Blair, and he directed them to me."

John smiled. "Yeah, Blair's pretty well-liked around here. I stopped by the infirmary earlier; he's sitting up, talking to visitors."

"Yes yes, I know I'd never be this popular on my own merits," Rodney snapped.

"What? No, that's not what I meant. I mean, that's a hell of a good thing you did there, buddy. I know it was rough, but it turned out good. And hey, look, positive reinforcement!" John pointed at the presents.

Rodney made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a snort, but he picked up the little pillow and clasped it to his stomach. "Half of them are probably just trying to soften me up so I'll use the device to heal their bunions and hangnails."

John blinked. He hadn't really thought about the ramifications. "Is that likely?"

"For minor problems? No. I wouldn't do it, and Beckett would back me up. But he's already talked to me about trying to help some of his worst cases, like Colonel Caldwell, and that other guy -- Sloane, Dorn? No, Lorne. Him. And I'm dreading the next time a gate team comes back with injuries."

Yeah, John could see how that could get pretty bad, if every use of the device flattened Rodney for a few hours to a day. "If it's too much for you, just tell me. Us. Ellison and Blair and I will keep them off your backs. So will Beckett, I bet."

Rodney tried to smile, but it slid off his face.

"Still got that headache, huh?"

"What? No, not really. Look -- why are you here?"

"Oh. Um." John looked down at his feet.

"Come on, spit it out already. It's late and I want to go to bed."

"Yeah, I know it's late. I tried to sleep already." John swallowed. "That didn't go so well. And I thought maybe, um . . ."

"What?"

"Could I stay here tonight? I mean, not for, uh . . . not that I would say no, or anything, but . . . look, I can sleep on the couch."

"There is no couch!"

"Figure of speech. I'll sleep, um --" John looked around the room. "In the chair, that will be fine." It wouldn't, really; he'd have an aching neck and back if he tried it, but he'd probably still get more sleep than in his cold, narrow bunk. He wondered if he could drag a couch here from the movie lounge, or something.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" Rodney objected. "Why do you want to -- oh. You're having those nightmares again."

John rubbed his jaw. "Something like that." Scenes of Blair or Rodney dying because he'd been too slow, too stupid, too directionally-challenged.

Rodney just looked at John, at the chair, at the bed, and back at John.

"Yeah, okay," John sighed. "It was a pretty dumb idea. I'll just go, uh --"

"No, it's not dumb." Rodney took a deep breath. "Okay. There's plenty of room on the bed. Just don't jostle my ribs -- they're still tender."

"Are you sure?" John peered at him. "I wouldn't want to keep you awake, or anything."

Rodney snorted.

"If I can, um, do anything to help you get to sleep . . . " John's face heated as he remembered the last night he'd slept in this room and how he'd helped Rodney sleep that time.

Rodney was apparently thinking the same thing. "No, thanks, the price for that last blowjob was high enough." He padded around to the rumpled side of the bed -- the left side, where he'd slept when they were together, except for the last night -- and climbed in.

John shifted from foot to foot. "Look, um, Rodney . . ."

Rodney glared. "Are you trying to hook up with me again, or something? Because you're not doing a very good job of it."

"I never wanted to break up with you in the first place." John hadn't meant to say that. He covered his confusion by climbing in the other side of the bed and fussing with the covers.

There was a long silence. "I'm pretty sure you were trying to break up with me," Rodney concluded.

"I didn't mean to. I was just . . ." John gulped. "It was too much. I got . . . too close, too involved. Too attached. It scared me, okay? I needed to get away for a while."

"So now, what, your 'while' is over, and you're finished freaking out?"

John leaned back on the mattress -- no pillow, since Bates would only issue one to a person and his was in the other room -- and stared at the ceiling with stinging eyes. "Not really. Still freaking out. Never stopped. But I guess I realized, it doesn't help."

"What doesn't help what?" Rodney demanded with an irritable edge to his voice.

"Being apart doesn't make me any less attached. I still, um, care about you." John's face was flaming now. "It would still hurt like hell if you got injured or killed -- especially if it was because of my mistake."

Rodney was silent.

"But I realize . . . maybe it's too late, anyway. I know I was . . . um, I know you were really hurt and upset, these last few weeks. And you had every right. So um . . . anyway, I'll still . . . either way." This wasn't working; he couldn't say any of the important stuff. "But whatever, I really appreciate you letting me, um, hang out here tonight. I haven't really slept too well lately. Tomorrow you can kick me out, or whatever."

Rodney was still silent, which seemed profoundly wrong. Maybe John had broken him. Or maybe he'd fallen asleep waiting for John to spit out his few pitiful words.

John sighed, willed the lights off, and closed burning eyes against the darkness. "Good night, Rodney."

It was a couple of minutes later and his breathing was just starting to ease without needing conscious control, when something hit his stomach.

"Here," said Rodney. He sounded awake enough.

"What --?" John groped for the object. It was the little pillow from the tribute pile, still warm with Rodney's heat.

"Since you left yours behind. You can go get your stuff tomorrow. And bring it back here." Then, just in case John had any illusions that he was out of the doghouse, Rodney turned onto his side facing away.

A long time after that, John was drifting through the vestibules of sleep, but he was pretty sure he didn't dream the soft words.

"I love you too, John."


End file.
